9/11 marked by protests and pleas for tolerance

[Jeffersons Ghost]

On 9/11, commemorations accompanied by focus on Islam

By Ann Gerhart and David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 12, 2010; 4:08 AM

Moments of silence and reminders of American freedoms have become the healing rites of Sept. 11. On Saturday, heated arguments about the legacy and lessons of the terror attacks nine years ago finally seeped into the day itself.

Heightened anxieties over a fringe pastor's plan to burn copies of the Koran and demonstrations centering on a planned mosque near New York's Ground Zero set a newly divisive tone - one that suggested deepening discord over the role of Islam in America.

In services at the Pentagon, at Ground Zero and at a fledgling national park in Shanksville, Pa., political leaders called for tolerance and spoke of the sense of shared purpose that prevailed after terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.

President Obama reprised a theme that his precedessor emphasized in those first weeks while the country was still reeling: the importance of respect for Islam. "As Americans we are not - and never will be - at war with Islam," Obama said in a speech at the Pentagon, as survivors of those who perished listened, a few nodding. "It was al-Qaeda, a sorry band of men which perverts religion. And just as we condemn intolerance and extremism abroad, so will we stay true to our traditions here at home as a diverse and tolerant nation."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/11/AR2010091101618.html?hpid=topnews

[ixion]

1. My plea is for some semblance of sanity to return to the collective dialog

because right now, it's just so much gibberish.